An engrossing film about the last years of the GDR and the power of the Stasi to control and destroy the lives of the people.

One of the Stasi’s top interrogators, Wiesler is imprisoned within his own belief in the ideology of socialism until he starts  to carry out surveillance on two artists – a playwright and his girlfriend, a famous actress in East Berlin. He begins to cover up what he discovers about the writer and in doing so sets off a train of events leading to the death of the actress and the curtailment of his own career.